Weather and Traffic

Cooler temps finally snap summer-long heat streak

The summer’s long string of above normal temperatures has finally been broken.

Saturday was the first day this month — and the first day since June 21 — to post average temperatures. The high at Palm Beach International Airport was 90 and the low was 76. Those are dead-on normals for the date.

It was 90 and 77 in Palm Beach.

The month overall is still running 4.1 degrees above normal with an average temperature of 86.6 through Saturday.

Highs during the upcoming work week are expected to be near average with nighttime lows running 4-5 degrees above normal.

The new three week outlook released Friday calls for more abnormally hot weather in Florida and the southern tier of states. (Credit: NOAA/ CPC)

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TROPICS TALK: Tropical Storm Darby smacked parts of Hawaii on Sunday with heavy rain and wind gusts of up to 56 mph. An observer on the Island of Maui reported a 24-hour rainfall total of 6.87 inches, according to the National Weather Service in Honolulu.

in the Eastern North Pacific, the National Hurricane Center was tracking Tropical Storm Frank, with winds of 65 mph, and Hurricane Georgette, which had winds of 85 mph. No watches or warnings were in effect for either storm.

The NHC is predicting no tropical development in the Atlantic through at least Friday. Sunday runs of the GFS show a tropical system forming near the Bahamas next weekend and moving up the East Coast toward the Carolinas.

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LAND PLAN: Louisiana has lost 20 percent of its wetlands over the past 50 years — an area the size of Delaware. But a strategy was announced Thursday to help rebuild land and wetlands in the area where the Mississippi empties into the Gulf of Mexico.

The plan, developed by the Sediment Diversion Operations Expert Working Group from Louisiana State University will employ “sediment diversions” — a network of gates and channels that will be built into Mississippi River levees — that will feed sediment into wetlands.

The group says using natural processes to rebuild land areas lost to rising sea levels and erosion can be used in other coastal communities as well.

“Land loss also affects resident fish and animals, migrating birds and shrimp, crab and oysters that comprise valuable stock for the U.S. seafood industry,” said John Andrew Nyman, a group leader and professor at the LSU School of Renewable Natural Resources. “Land loss over the next 50 years will be worse than it needs to be if we don’t manage the river to build new wetlands.”

Louisiana has lost land the size of a football field every day since the 1930s, LSU scientists said.